Give the Dark My Love(38)

Her scream ripped through the hospital, long and loud and filled with such pure anguish that everyone turned to witness the manifested sorrow.

I rushed over with the other potion makers and Alchemist Addrina. Addrina tried to get the mother to let go of the little bundle in her arms, but she finally had to pry the child from the woman’s hands. The alchemist passed the baby to me. Her flesh was cold to the touch. She had been dead for some time, probably since the ferry ride, and the mother had somehow been able to deceive herself until that moment in the crowded hospital hallway.

“She’s mine!” the woman screamed, snatching the baby from me, clutching the tiny body to her chest, choking back dry sobs. The woman dropped to the floor, cradling her child against her.

Addrina injected something into the woman’s neck, and in a few minutes her body grew slack. It looked as if she were sleeping. As if they both were.

Monkswort, I thought, looking at the syringe. A mild sedative. It allowed the aides to come and take the baby away, put the woman on a gurney, and find her a room.

But she will still wake up eventually, I thought, tears pricking my eyes.

“Nedra!” Alchemist Addrina barked at me. I’d only worked with her a handful of times before, but she was always kind, respectful of my work with Master Ostrum. She’d trained under him, too. “There’s work to do,” she said, her shoulders stiff. Addrina had never been so abrupt before.

This life was wearing on us all.

I nodded tightly, clutching my golden crucible. “Bring me a cart,” I told the nearest potion maker. “I’ll make surgical relief rounds.”

The potion maker went running, meeting me in the hall with a cart full of rats. I went from bed to bed, siphoning off pain from those recovering from recent amputation, pouring the pain into the rats. The work was hard, and I began seeing spots in the edges of my vision, but I forced myself to continue.

“It’s you.”

I looked into the face of the boy on the bed. His arm was gone just above his elbow. I knew him. My mind struggled to find his name, the connection of who he was.

And then a man roared at me. He lunged over the boy’s bed, his hands grappling for my throat. “You!” he screamed, his voice raw and ragged.

I scrambled back, dropping my crucible with an audible crash on the tile floor. There was nowhere to run—the room was crowded with beds. I fell against the bed of a sleeping girl whose leg had been amputated, jostling her so roughly that she woke up screaming. The man’s eyes were wild as he pushed aside the nearest bed. His fingers wrapped around my arm, digging into my flesh. “You, you!” he raged at me.

Others had realized something was wrong, and two large boys who worked as aides were trying to get through the maze of beds to come help me.

The man still held on to my arm, so when he raised his other hand and slammed it, open, against my jaw, I couldn’t pull away, and I took the full force of the teeth-clacking blow. My vision blackened, and I tasted the sharp metallic sting of blood on my lips.

“Hey!” one of the aides shouted. “Let her go!”

The man did—but so abruptly that I fell. He dropped on top of me, one of his knees pinning my arm. I tried to scoot away, but he leaned over, pressing his weight against me. “Your fault,” he snarled. “It’s all your fault.” He punctuated each word with snapping teeth, drawing closer to me until he was just millimeters from my face.

Finally—finally—the aides arrived. One knocked the man away. I rolled under the nearest bed, my body trembling, as the other aide held down the man’s arm. He kicked and thrashed, bucking his body, his head smacking the tile floor so loudly that it sounded like pottery cracking.

“Get help!” one of the aides shouted.

A potion maker arrived as if from thin air, holding a bottle of tincture of blue ivy.

“Not that,” I croaked. That medicine was too expensive, too hard to come by. The patients needed it.

The man’s body stilled. He wasn’t knocked out, but his pupils grew large, and his twisted rage melted into a placid expression.

“He didn’t mean it!” the boy on the bed called as the aides dragged him away. “He’s just—” His father was already gone from the room. The boy’s eyes fell on me. “Angry. He’s just angry.”

I stood, trembling. The potion maker helped me up. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine.”

“I can give you some to help calm you—” She held the bottle to me.

“I’m fine, Gella,” I said again, shaking her hands off me. My nerves were shot, but I wouldn’t take blue ivy from the patients.

She looked concerned, but finally shrugged and walked away.

My hands trembled as I reached down and picked up the golden crucible. I put it back on the table. I could feel the other patients’ eyes on me.

“I’m sorry,” the boy said.

And I recognized him, finally. “Ronan.”

The boy smiled weakly. When I had met him and his family, he’d had his other arm. And he’d had a mother and a brother.

“They didn’t—?” I asked.

He shook his head.

I had known the mother wouldn’t live, but I’d hoped the younger brother might . . . but now they both were gone, and Ronan’s father, Dannix, blamed me.